Where Has all The Good Time Gone?

Where Has all The Good Time Gone?

Matt Rowe presents us with the faded spectacle and isolated amusements. He has manipulated the photo with washes of colour or digital additions. We see the highlighted edges of a ride, the lights of an amusement arcade, tempting us with echoes of a past glamour, with packed crowds and good times. The conscious choice of a memoir aesthetic suggests the images are from the past. With an aura of nostalgia the photographs not only present a longing for a prior era but further anticipate the changes yet to occur on the Rotunda site.

The temporary amusements are already in the past, already part of the shifting landscape of Folkestone’s redevelopment campaign. For Matt Rowe, the shift in the seaside resort is a moment to be recorded marking a point of transition from the dreamland’s of the past to the seasides of the present. It is a shift that leaves us with a space of uncertainty, a disenchanted, sad and occasionally ferocious amusement park, a sight to be captured and commemorated along with other seaside eras.